Columbus man charged with providing support to Islamic terrorists

Tuesday

Nov 8, 2016 at 12:01 AMNov 8, 2016 at 11:15 AM

Aaron T. Daniels didn't tell his mother or sister where he was going when he left the family's Northeast Side home Monday morning. Someone, though, was watching and waiting. When Daniels arrived at John Glenn Columbus International Airport, federal agents arrested him before he could board United Airlines Flight 4402 for Houston, Texas. His eventual destination was Libya where, prosecutors say, he planned to fight for the Islamic State.

Earl Rinehart, The Columbus Dispatch

Aaron T. Daniels didn't tell his mother or sister where he was going when he left the family's Northeast Side home Monday morning.

Someone, though, was watching and waiting.

When Daniels arrived at John Glenn Columbus International Airport, federal agents arrested him before he could board United Airlines Flight 4402 for Houston, Texas. His eventual destination was Libya where, prosecutors say, he planned to fight for the Islamic State.

Daniels, 20, appeared in U.S. District Court later on Monday, where a judge told him he is accused of providing material support to a foreign terrorist group. He is being held without bail.

Adrienne Daniels said the allegations against her son are a shock. She said he wanted to travel to the Middle East to study Islam.

"He must have got in contact with the wrong people," is the only answer she could give as she stood in the doorway of her home in the 2200 block of Century Drive. She said federal agents searched their home and took every electronic device and other items belonging to her son.

Mrs. Daniels said Aaron, who graduated from the Early College Academy two years ago, and attended Columbus Alternative High School before that, "had issues. "He's not well, mentally," she said, but declined to elaborate. He had been working at a warehouse, she said.

The family is not Muslim but Aaron became interested in Islam years ago and studied Arabic on his own, Mrs. Daniels said. She said he aspired to one day become an imam. But he never talked about the insurgency,she said.

Aaron Daniels occasionally attended a nearby mosque on Mock Road, the Masjid As-Sunnah, but wasn't involved in its activities, officials there said.

Iman Mukhtar I. Haji said as far as he knows, Daniels never discussed the Islamic State or studying overseas.

"We fight against those ideas (violent jihad) even more than the government," Haji said.

The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force had been watching Aaron Daniels since at least September 2015, when he set up an email address and a social-media account under the aliases Harun Muhammad and Abu Yusuf. Over the next two months, he wrote about "Ambitions for Jihad" and his desire to join the insurgency in Afghanistan, then later in Syria to stop the Russian-Iranian "onslaught on our people," the complaint contends. He sought donations to cover his costs.

In January 2016, Daniels wired $250 to an intermediary of Islamic State recruiter and attack planner Abu Isa Al-Amriki, the FBI said. Abu Isa Al-Amriki and his wife, Umm Isa Al-Amriki, an American couple who recruited Westerners for the Islamic State, were killed in an airstrike in Syria last May.

Daniels told the undercover agent that Abu Isa Al-Amriki had encouraged him to go to Libya to help fight to establish a caliphate there.

Daniels had purchased the airline ticket Saturday. Asked by the undercover agent why he picked a route from Columbus to Houston to Trinidad and Tobago, Daniels said it was so "the kuffar (nonbelievers) don't track me as if I was to just go to Tunisia from the United States," according to the complaint.

After his arrest, Daniels admitted donating $250 to the Islamic State and said he was headed to Libya to join the insurgency, the FBI said.

A couple of neighbors said they never talked to Aaron Daniels and would see him either mowing the lawn or wearing the traditional long shirt and cap on his way to mosque.

Others praised Adrienne Daniels as a wonderful mother. "I know her. That's not the way she raised her kids," a woman who declined to give her name said.

Kevin Odoms lives across from the Daniels home.

"I hope for the family that what they say he did isn't true," he said. "But if it is, thank God" that Daniels was stopped.